


The Chastisement of Margery Kempe

by UpTooLate (NaomiK)



Category: 14th Century CE RPF
Genre: Crueltide, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 16:21:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8674333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaomiK/pseuds/UpTooLate
Summary: She thought that these horrible sights and accursed thoughts were delicious to her against her will. --The Book of Margery Kempe, chapter 59





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notearchiver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notearchiver/gifts).



“Why are you here?”

Agnes, Margery’s oldest daughter, stood in the doorway of her house, blocking Margery’s view of the inside. She had a spoon in one hand and Margery could smell the distinctive odor of soap-making coming from inside. Agnes needed to get back to stirring her soap, or it wouldn’t come out properly. “I just felt like coming for a visit,” Margery said. “To see my lovely daughters. Eldest and youngest. It seemed like a good day for it. I’ll help you stir the soap.”

Agnes glanced over her shoulder, sighed, and stepped out of the way, silently handing Margery the spoon. Margery could see little Juliana and gave her a fond smile. “Hello, my darling.”

“Are you going to help stir or not?” Agnes asked.

She was always so accusing. Never believed Margery was going to do what she said she would. “Of course I’m going to stir,” Margery said. “I just wanted a kiss from Juliana first.”

Agnes snatched the spoon out of Margery’s hand. “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”

It hurt Margery’s feelings that her own daughter would speak to her in such a way, it really did, but she offered up that sadness, and her own suppressed urge to speak sharply to Agnes, for the benefit of their souls. “Give Mother a kiss?” she said to Juliana.

Juliana stood up and gave her a dutiful peck on the cheek. “Hello, Mother. It’s nice to see you.” She had been rocking the cradle of Agnes’s own new baby, who was a fitful sleeper and cried a lot. She knelt down to rock the cradle again.

Margery could feel Agnes’s glare, so she went over -- not hurrying, because she didn’t want Agnes getting the idea that _Margery_ thought she’d done anything wrong -- and took the spoon to stir for a spell. She wanted to ask how Agnes’s husband was, but anything she said was just going to irritate Agnes more, so she stirred in silence, watching Juliana rock the cradle.

When Margery had realized she was pregnant with Juliana, God had promised her that He would provide someone to care for her, and He had, sure enough, and Margery was grateful to God, and to Agnes. She couldn’t have taken Juliana on her pilgrimage, and it would have been terribly difficult to raise yet another little child, and people would have talked, even more than they talked already. Juliana was John’s child: when they were still sharing a house, there’d been just a few nights he’d decided to break his vow of chaste marriage, and all of Margery’s pleading and prayers had been for nothing. But of course everyone knew about the vows, and they knew that Margery traveled sometimes without John, and it didn’t matter that Juliana had John’s eyes and John’s chin, people would have said Margery got pregnant from whoring herself out. Agnes loved little Juliana and treated her like her own daughter. She treated Juliana more like a daughter than she treated Margery like a mother, in fact.

“I’ll take a turn.” Agnes took the spoon from Margery’s hand and sat down to stir.

Margery’s eyes were burning but it was from the soap fumes, not from the tears that were God’s precious gift. She was trying hard not to think of anything holy just now, because if she started weeping, Agnes would throw her out on the spot; she had no patience for Margery’s devotion. Margery stepped away from the fire, thinking decisively about soap-making. She thought it would need a fair bit more stirring, and Agnes would like having her to help stir, so as long as she could keep from loud weeping she could probably get away with asking a few questions even if they irritated Agnes.

“Have you heard anything lately from your brother John?”

“No,” Agnes said.

“Robert?”

“He does well in his apprenticeship.”

“Johannah?”

“She thinks the baby should be here before the harvest.” Agnes went silent for a bit, then added, mulishly, “She asks that you pray for her safe delivery.”

“Of course I will.” Margery felt some satisfaction that Johannah would want her prayers, even if she didn’t want her visits.

“Any news from Father?” Agnes asked.

“You know I try not to visit him,” Margery said. “I don’t wish to be a cause of temptation.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t see him.”

“I haven’t, of late.”

The baby stirred, despite Juliana’s rocking, and began to wail. “Pick him up,” Agnes instructed Juliana. “Take him outside.”

It was Margery’s turn to stir again. “I do appreciate your kindness to Juliana,” she said, taking the spoon and sitting down.

Agnes heaved a sigh, the kindest sound she’d made in Margery’s presence yet. “She’s a sweet child and a hard worker,” she said.

Margery’s eyes were burning again from the soap fumes, and she blinked, offering the pain to God for the good of Agnes’s soul. And Juliana’s. And the baby’s. Outside, she could hear the baby crying, and despite herself, this made her think of the Christ child, crying over the sin in the world, and the tears began to stream down her cheeks as a moan rose in her throat. 

Agnes snatched the spoon out of her hand. “Get out,” she said.

Margery stumbled out the door, almost tripping over Juliana as she left. “Can I rock the baby a moment?” she gulped out between sobs. 

Juliana handed him over, looking at her warily. Margery sat on the front step, rocking the baby, repeating to herself it was only her own little grandchild, not the Son of God, and slowly her own sobs, like the baby’s, eased up.

“Tell me again where I got my name,” Juliana said.

“You are named after Julian of Norwich,” Margery said. “She was a very holy lady who lived in Norwich as an Anchoress. She lived in a church and said prayers for people and thought about holy and sacred things.”

“Like you do?”

“Like I do, yes. I visited her years ago to ask her whether my weeping came from God, and she said that it did.” Margery had sat outside the Anchoress’s cell for three days. Julian had mostly been silent, listening to Margery, and Margery had talked, and wept, and prayed, and talked some more, and wept some more. And wept again. In those days Margery often doubted herself: she doubted her tears, her feelings, her sense of connection to God. But she believed in Julian, and if Julian believed in her she knew she could believe in that.

And Julian had believed in her. “Your tears are from God,” she’d said. “I believe that you speak truly to God in your soul, and hear truly from God when you pray. But walk carefully, because you walk in the world, as God wills, at least for now. And it can be hard to be sure what comes from God, and what comes from the world, and what comes from your will, and what comes from the Deceiver. Measure your experiences according to how they profit your fellow Christians, and how they direct worship to God. You will not go wrong, or at least not far wrong.”

“But my tears,” Margery had said. “My weeping, everyone despises me for it.”

That seemed to reassure Julian, if anything. “Your tears are the Holy Spirit’s work in your soul,” she said. “By weeping, you redeem even those who despise you.”

Margery told the story to little Juliana, and felt Juliana relax against her, warm against her like sunshine.

“Juliana,” Agnes called from inside.

“I’d better go,” Juliana said. She held out her hands for the baby. Margery held him just a moment longer, to sniff his head and kiss his downy hair, and then handed him back. Her daughter and her grandson disappeared into Agnes’s house.

 _Thus I had to say goodbye to my own son_ , the Virgin Mary spoke into her soul, _I had to let him depart from Nazareth to preach and teach and gather his disciples and I had to let him go to his death, and then I had to let him go once again up to Heaven._

Margery felt a stab of pain as she heard the Virgin’s words, and she was carried away on a tide of weeping as she walked all the way back to her own house in town.

* * *

It was a Tuesday, and so she could go to Father Martin Whyte to be read to.

Father Martin was one of God’s kindest gifts to her: a loving priest, tolerant of her tears, who could read. Who was willing to read. He told her sometimes that she was a gift to him, too, because his reading to her had caused him to seek out far more holy books than he’d ever have read on his own.

Father Martin’s mother let her in when she arrived and brought her straight to his study, where he had already opened the book he was reading to her, Walter Hilton’s Scale of  Perfection. He read her a chapter. He had a good reading voice, which was an additional blessing -- Margery would have been glad to listen even if he’d had a voice like a chicken, but he had a deep, melodious voice that was a pleasure to listen to even when he spoke of mundane things, and a gentle, lined face that was a pleasure to look at. She often closed her eyes as he read so as not to be distracted by it.

Today the book made her think again of Agnes and how irritating she always found Margery, no matter what Margery did.

_Father Martin is saved, but Agnes shall be damned._

That thought could not have come from God, she thought.

_Daughter. You must hear of the damned as well as the saved._

Her eyes flew open. Father Martin was still reading, and she focused her thoughts on his words about the darkness of sin.

Agnes is not damned, she thought, fiercely. This is an evil spirit trying to deceive me.

Father Martin finished the chapter, and they discussed what it had said. Margery ordinarily lived for these afternoons -- the reading, the holy conversation -- but the thought that Agnes was to be damned returned to her again and again, distractingly. _This thought is not from God_ , she told herself firmly.

* * *

That evening, as she said her nightly prayers and prepared to lay down for sleep, the thought returned again. “I rebuke you, unclean spirit,” she said aloud. “Be gone.”

 _Oh, Margery_ , she felt God say in her soul. _Since you ask me to be gone, I will go, and you will find out what it truly is to be tormented by evil spirits._

She felt something like a chill wind pass through her, and heard a faint, dark laugh.

Closing her eyes in the darkness, she tried to clear her mind and think of something holy (but not _too_ holy lest it keep her awake with prayers and weeping) but the visions that swam into her mind were utterly profane. John’s penis, swollen and engorged, when he put it in her face that time, telling her that he’d have release one way or the other and it was up to her whether she wanted to be pregnant again.

 _I refuse to think of this_ , she thought, and instead she found herself thinking of every man from Lynn, exposing himself to her, their bare members red and upright in the summer sun as they grinned at her to mock her. “We know you’re not _truly_ chaste, Margery Kempe!” they laughed. “How would you like _this_ fine horse to ride?” “Or this?” “Or this?” She saw a veritable parade of men, from the Lord Mayor down to the lowest beggar, every one displaying their erect penis to her and taunting her with foul and disrespectful language.

 _You must choose_ , she heard a voice say. _You must choose your favorite. You must choose which one you’ll have first._

 _I refuse to choose,_ she thought desperately. _Please let me die, if I must, to keep my chastity._

Laughter, and: _You will be whored to every man in succession._

 _Oh God, help me_ , she thought. But no answer came.

* * *

In the darkness, she wasn’t sure if she dreamed, or saw waking visions, or saw things that were truly happening.

It was the face of Father Martin, but she knew it was not him, but a demon choosing to appear as Father Martin, solely to bring her more torment, since Father Martin was a trusted friend.

The demon laughed with Father Martin’s voice. “Father Martin pretends to be your friend, but if you’re in the same room with him, he is thinking every moment of your tight cunt, Margery. He imagines thrusting his hard cock down your throat while you gag. He imagines spreading your legs and licking you between them until you are wet, then thrusting himself into you like a sword. He may pretend to be holy, he may pretend to be high-minded, but that’s what he’s thinking every moment.”

“You lie,” Margery said. “You’re a devil, and all devils do is lie.”

“This is not a lie,” the devil said, and laid his hands upon Margery’s night dress, ripping it asunder to leave her naked in her bed.

Margery tried to fight back, and for a moment she thought she might even win, because the devil stepped back for a moment. Then he snapped his fingers, and four more devils appeared, all in the guise of men from the town. They stepped forward to hold her down.

“You should have cooperated,” the first devil said, “For if you’d cooperated, only I would have had you. But now we shall each have a turn.”

Two of the men held her arms down against the bed. Two more spread her legs apart, then pinned them into place.

The devil with Father Martin’s face loosened the string of his trousers, and they fell to the floor, baring his member, which was enormous, like no true man’s penis. “You probably think you cannot take this inside you,” he said, “But I assure you that you can. Or at least I can assure you that you _will._ ”

Margery again tried to fight back, but the four devils wrestled her back down. The devil with Father Martin’s face smiled down at her happily. “First, I will make you wet,” he said.

He bent his head between her legs and put out his tongue, which was long and forked, like a snake’s tongue. He put his tongue into the crevices and found the place that John had once touched to make Margery cry out in pleasure. John had never used his tongue, though, only his fingers, and the devil’s tongue was quick and clever and despite Margery’s fear and horror she felt pleasure shoot through her like fire and she cried out in despair. When John had taken her against her will, he’d accepted that she would acquiesce and simply lie there unresisting. The devil wanted Margery to participate, and against her will, she was participating.

She felt her body flush with heat; she cried out again, even as she wept at the violation.

“And now,” the devil said, “And now I will have you.” He knelt between her legs, laid his pulsing member at her opening, and pushed himself inside.

His cock was enormous, and it stretched her going in and pounded deep into her body, deeper than John had ever gone, deep enough that it hurt even as her traitorous body made her cry out again in pleasure as well as pain. She wanted it to hurt; mere pain, she knew how to endure. The devil rocked himself halfway out, then slammed himself into her again, and something dragged itself across that spot of impossible pleasure and as he thrust into her again she felt her own climax building and as she wailed “no, no, no,” it crashed into her like a wave against a ship and the demons laughed. She felt the demon’s spurt inside of her like burning embers and she thought, at least it was over.

But they were not done with her.

They pulled her from her bed and put her on her knees on her wooden floor and they clasped her hands behind her back and yanked her hair to pull her head back and the next demon’s cock was before her face.

“Open your mouth, Margery,” the first demon said, and she tried to disobey but found that she could not refuse: her mouth opened obedient to the demon’s words.

The demon thrust into her mouth and down her throat. He tasted of vomit and seawater and she gagged, her spit drooling out of her mouth. When he spewed his semen across her face it burned like a scald; she felt blisters rise across her cheek.

Then the demons wrestled her across her own wooden table, because two of them had decided to have her at once. Two pinned her wrists down, and she tried to kick but she had no purchase and couldn’t properly aim, and the demon behind her spread her legs and thrust into her as the first demon had. Then, still inside her, he gripped her hair and pulled her head up so that another demon could thrust into her mouth and down her throat.

This demon wanted to take his time; he pushed his member down her throat and left it there such that she couldn’t breath, and the world grew dark and she blessed God because she thought he would allow her to simply die. But then he pulled out again and her treacherous body took a breath and she returned to consciousness as the demon behind her grunted in his pleasure, thrusting into her body. “You are mine,” he hissed, “God said I could do to you as I liked, and so I will.”

The final demon took her in the style of the Sodomites, as John had suggested once or twice when Margery particularly didn’t want to become pregnant. It was every bit as painful as she remembered.

* * *

_Margery._

_Margery_.

The demons were gone. She was lying on the floor of her house, under the table, her nightclothes torn and in disarray.

And now she saw an angel, her guardian angel who she’d seen before in times when she was most desperate. Her angel, stroking her hair, taking her by the hand, leading her back to bed. Drawing her blankets up around her; pressing warm hands against her face. The warmth sunk in; she felt the bruises and burns left by the demons on her body melt away.

“Why?” she whispered.

The angel sat on the edge of her bed, and brushed a strand of hair tenderly from her eyes. “You believed that the words of God were coming from a demon tormenting you,” the angel said, gently. “And so you must find out what it truly is to have demons torment you, so that you will be able to tell the difference.”

“I understand now,” she said, her voice cracking.

The angel sadly shook his head. “Twelve nights will you be tormented.”

“Twelve nights?”

“Endure your chastisement, daughter. God will never foresake you,” the angel said, and disappeared.

* * *

Twelve nights.

The demon visits began nearly as soon as the sun had gone down; she scarcely dared leave her house during the day for fear that they would put some foul words on her lips. She put it about that she was unwell, and stayed home as much as possible. She knelt in prayer for hours, even as she was tormented with visions of naked men baring their genitals at her and laughing, trusting -- or at least hoping -- that God still heard her.

* * *

On the morning after the last night, she prostrated herself on the floor of her house, scarcely believing that her punishment might be over. When she heard the voice of Jesus saying _now believe that I am no devil_ she was overcome with weeping and laid as if in a stupor, sobbing, through the afternoon.

As the light faded from the sky, she tensed, fearing despite the angel’s promises that the demons would be back. _Margery, trust in me and my grace_ , Jesus’s voice said to her. _Your chastisement is complete and you are my worthy and beloved daughter._

“But Agnes,” she said, and her own voice broke a little. “My own daughter. You said she is damned.”

_For your sake, Margery, and for how bravely you bore your punishment, I shall forgive Agnes her sins, as if she had confessed them and been shriven. Even in the darkest moments you did not forget Me, and so I will not forget your daughter._

* * *

Margery had avoided last week’s trip to be read to by Father Martin, fearful of what the demons might make her blurt out to him, and had sent a message that she was feeling too unwell to leave her bed. To her embarrassment, he’d sent his mother to her with a basket of fresh bread and cheese, so that she wouldn’t have to cook for herself, a kindness that made her writhe all the more in shame.

She was determined to repay the kindness once her strength had returned, but today she simply presented herself as always at his door, thanked his mother for her generosity, and sat down to hear more of _The Scale of Perfection._

She realized once she was seated that she’d been bracing herself for the sight of his face, which one of the demons had worn nearly every night. (Once it had chosen to look like her husband John, instead, and twice it had chosen to appear as her confessor.)

But the sight of Father Martin’s true face made her heart lift, for there was none of the lust or guile there, but only concern and kindness. “Are you feeling better today, Margery?” he asked.

“Much better,” she said, thinking how glad she was that he was not her confessor and did not ever have to know about those twelve hideous nights.

“I’d like to set aside Hilton for a few weeks, because I have something new I think you might like to hear,” he said. “I understand that you met Julian of Norwich once a few years ago? Just this week I received from a friend a copy of the manuscript she completed before she died.”

"Sir, if you’d like to read that to me, I’d very much like to hear it,” Margery said.

“I thought you might!” Father Martin laid the manuscript on his desk, settled in, and began to read. “This is a Revelation of Love that Jesus Christ, our endless bliss, made in Sixteen Showings, or Revelations particular, of which The First Showing is of his precious crowning with thorns…”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Book of Margery Kempe is available online in the original Middle English, but for the most part I relied on the Penguin Classics edition (translated by B.A. Windeatt) supplemented by Wikipedia and Googling. 
> 
> Margery had fourteen children. It is unknown how many survived to adulthood. The only one she discusses in her book is John, the oldest, who lives a dissolute life for a while and then repents and settles down with a wife in Prussia. John is believed to have been Margery’s first scribe -- an English-speaker who was literate in German. (The barely-legible stew was translated by a priest friend of Margery’s who apparently got an assist from God to make heads or tails of it.) I invented Agnes, though her existence seemed reasonable to me. 
> 
> In Chapter 21, Margery mentions a pregnancy. There is scholarly debate over whether this chapter comes out of chronological order, or if Margery got pregnant at some point after she and her husband took vows of chastity. Given John’s complete lack of enthusiasm for the idea of a chaste marriage, and given that they lived together for a while after taking those vows, and given Margery’s lament to God in that chapter that she really wishes to live a chaste life, I think my theory here (that John decided not to keep that vow) is a plausible one. (There are also people who think she had this child on pilgrimage -- in my chronology, she had this child while still in Lynn, and handed her off to Agnes for care when she left on the pilgrimage.) I decided she named this child after Julian of Norwich. I’ll note that Julian of Norwich was not this anchoress’s real name (which is unknown), but Margery refers to her as Julian, so clearly this was a name used within that woman’s lifetime.
> 
> I also made up a name for Margery’s faithful reader, who is described in chapters 58 and 60. He is not named in the book, but clearly needed a name in my story.
> 
> The “tormented by demons for rejecting the idea of damnation” part of the story is canon, and you can find Margery’s telling of it in chapter 59 in her book. She describes being tormented by visions of men showing her their “bare membyrs” (or “naked genitals,” in Windeatt’s translation) and hearing demons tell her that she will have to choose her favorite, and also be prostituted to all of them. I embellished this in my telling, obviously… but I was embellishing Margery's story and not making stuff up out of whole cloth!
> 
> I first read Margery Kempe’s book many years go in a college English class called “Women in English Literature 1200-1800” and I remembered her laments about about going on pilgrimage and then being shunned by the other pilgrims because of her incessant, annoying weeping. Picking her back up for Yuletide was really interesting. She is clearly frustrating and infuriating to many of the people who have to deal with her, and I have no doubt that I would find her irritating as a mother, a neighbor, or a traveling companion. But I also have to give her credit for her intelligence, her determination to find people to read to her, and her ability to exploit the hell out of the loopholes available to her as a devout woman faithfully obeying God’s will as she finds it. (It’s amazing how often God decides she needs to get the heck out of Lynn and travel. Of course she TOTALLY hates travelling and is only doing so because God told her to, as she indignantly informs her resentful daughter-in-law when she decides to accompany her back to Prussia...) 
> 
> Finally, many thanks to servantofclio and edonohana for beta-reading!


End file.
